Record Collector's Scores

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For 2,550 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 Doctrine Of Love
Lowest review score: 20 Relaxer
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,695 out of 2550
  2. Mixed: 849 out of 2550
  3. Negative: 6 out of 2550
2550 music reviews
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    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fuzzy Logic [20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
    On transferring the original tapes band archivist Cliph Schurlock realised that the original mastering had shaved off the mid-range frequencies, which he promptly restored, along with previously edited intros. So what we have here is a much warmer-sounding, fuller album, along with the contemporary B-sides, revealing demos and a raucous live set from Phoenix festival. It’s a psych-dipped, surreal set of infectious, concise pop gems.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lady, Give Me Your Key: The Unissued 1967 Solo Acoustic Sessions
    Even in these bare-bones arrangements, the songs are fully formed, particularly the likes of Pleasant Street and Once I Was: as captivating as anything Buckley put to tape.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Double Take
    A fitting tribute and a welcome opportunity to hear Miller’s unreleased songs and performances.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Intoxicated Women
    Like Gainsbourg’s music as a whole, there’s too much going on here to do justice to the collection’s many layers.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Must Be Free
    While the visual presentation is a bit workaday and some of the chosen musical styles already outmoded (dubstep already being ancient history), the tracks work just fine, bristling with multi-layered mystical gibbering.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    XAM Duo
    It isn't always the easiest of listens, but persistence pays off: XAM Duo is ultimately very rewarding.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Young Narrator in the Breakers
    It’s very much a full-band sound, yet the detail in the arrangements proves to be vital.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Born of the Sun
    Movies are the best comparisons as Faun Fables’ dark yet beautiful songs are utterly cinematic.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Simple Minds Acoustic
    Some of these quiet reworks are extremely good indeed; all highlight Burchill’s prowess with an acoustic guitar.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Deaner Album
    Some tracks don’t develop as much as you might hope, and as a whole The Deaner Album is a bit of a mixed bag, albeit with some winning flavours.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Babes Never Die
    More songs like the atmospheric Walking At Midnight would make the album a more rounded listen. If they step outside the box next time out, they may be onto something a bit special.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Do Hollywood
    The most exciting thing about them--their knack with a tune and fanfare--is buried beneath what could be considered unnecessary flourishes. Strip it back guys, chill out. You’re still young.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Soft Hair
    Prepare to be taken on a journey around the pair’s sonic universe that touches on everything from US R&B, Nilsson-esque singer-songwriter numbers and back again, all under a heady sheen of studio shimmer that can feel woozy, psychedelic or just 110 per cent odd at any one point.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alone
    This is primal, bluesy and as in-your-face as the clenched fist on the sleeve. At 65, it’s a brave change of direction.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ruminations
    They’re not as overwrought as the earliest Bright Eyes records--recorded when he was in his teens and early 20s--but they’re just as pure and open-hearted, albeit with the (jaded) wisdom that comes with age, making it arguably his best solo effort yet.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    FLOTUS
    Another career highpoint for Wagner and co.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Become Zero
    Become Zero is an affecting and profound work that inspires great empathy.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Live at the Whisky a Go Go: The Complete Recordings
    Otis and his touring band rip it up and the excitable singer thrills, with what now reads like a greatest hits.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Overnight
    There’s an intriguing mix of self-penned tunes (Something Familiar with its country-soul undertones), cool covers (Jackson C Frank’s Milk & Honey), and historic reinventions, from lute ballad to World War One elegy.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stripped
    The intention is to capture music and make it sound as if the listener is in the same room as the musicians and certainly, producers and label owners, David and Norman Chesky, achieve that effect with this wonderful album, which finds the quirky Ohio-born singer backed by a jazz quartet that includes guitarist Russell Malone and trumpeter Wallace Roney.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Primitives
    At times, this record can come across as little more than a variation on one of those CDs of new age music designed for meditation and spiritual well-being--Marim, for example, is a collage of pan-pipe-like sounds and water noises, and Omar could feasily belong to the type of compilation called Rainforest Colours--but there are some treats here.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    22, A Million
    While some may sneer at the glitches and production tricks that pepper the record, thinking them mere gimmicks, those who stick around long enough will be rewarded by a string of mature, thoughtful songs emerging from their concealment, gradually revealing a little more of themselves with each play.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    You Want It Darker
    It’s as strong a collection as any of his in recent times and tied together of course by that voice--deeply authoritative, unfathomably evocative and really quite irreplaceable.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lighthouse
    Lighthouse sees Crosby at his most stripped-back; rather than attempting to update his sound to suit the times it feels as if he has distilled it, leaving something akin to Essence Of Crosby, despite being crafted in cahoots with Michael League of Snarky Puppy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dreamless
    While this doesn’t mark a new beginning for the band, it nevertheless represents a step down a different path that they’ll hopefully continue to follow.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lodestar
    The music exceeds expectation and while this understandably isn’t her best album, it looks at the current trend for reformations and reduces them to ash.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Upcetera
    Clean, sophisticated and with nary a bushy beard in sight, it turns raditional ballads into something that could be chart-friendly today, sitting them alongside a couple of self-penned numbers.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Music Must Destroy
    The long-awaited Music Must Destroy is Ruts DC’s first fully-fledged rock LP since Animal Now and it doesn’t disappoint.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The False Foundation
    A sequence of aural art installations carved out of sound, a Tate Modern exhibition mounted on a shiny disc, spacious and sparse, repetitive and insistent, haunting and inspired. That makes it disjointed perhaps, but that’s just the diverse nature of its multiple outlooks.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Philosophy of the World [Remastered]
    The cloistered and unwilling girls’ father’s attempts to get them to do a Herman’s Hermits left them more in line with enjoyably sloppy garage rock. In fact, they went so far out as to prefigure post-punk’s plangency and jittery inclusivity: they were essentially The Raincoats, a decade ahead of time.
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